Yume
by Pam t3h Spam
Summary: inukagkik: Yume—dream: when we wake, they depart, chased away for another night…or are they something a little more real? The line separating Kikyou and Kagome has never been this blurred. COMPLETE.
1. premonition

[i/k/k] Dreams are fantasies, wishes, jealousies, yearnings, the darkest and most desperate secrets of the heart. And when we wake, they are gone, chased away for another night. Or are they? What if dreams are something a little more...real?

**yume **

**(dream)**

_[a darker inuyasha/kagome/kikyou]_

I wake.

It is not a pleasant sensation; the second I regain consciousness I wish I had never opened my eyes. So I squeeze them shut again. But I _am_ awake, and my body refuses to obey the order to sleep.

Slowly, I glance around. Dark walls, dark air, and not a window in the place to let in the faint twilight. The white of my miko's robes almost glow in this oppressive place, like some absurd beacon of—of what? Hope? Luck? I can feel a tiny, ironic smile tug at the corners of my lips—I am certainly neither.

_Inuyasha. _

Some lingering, fragmented memory of a dream suddenly resurfaces, and my thoughts swing to that topic. Conflicting emotions hit me, sugar and salt, pleasure and pain. What confusion that one hanyô causes in my mind...

I loved him. Once.

That dream—for a moment the world inverts itself in a dizzying wave of vertigo, and I am _in_ the dream, still sleeping, still helpless, still watching as something horribly red and dark splatters over the ground in droplets and streams and waves, puddles of life's blood spraying out in a fine red mist—

Then the moment passes. I can hear the small gasping sounds of my own breath, far away. I force myself to concentrate, to ignore the cold sweat trickling down my face like 

_(blood)_

something I do not want to think about.

"Kikyou-sama. Is something wrong?"

I turn; standing in the doorway are Asuka and Kochou. I imagine for a second that there is concern on their childish faces, but that is impossible. They are no more than paper dolls given form and movement by my magic, no more than puppets to do my bidding—alive and yet not alive.

Like me.

"You are back. Have you learned anything new about Naraku?"

As one, they bow and shake their heads.

Suddenly, I am tired of their company, their false little-girl forms, their blank and expressionless eyes so like and yet not like Kaede's. Kaede, now an old woman while I stay young—how odd.

But, really, I am the odd one, not her.__

"Asuka, Kochou."

Once again, they bow simultaneously. Really, it is getting quite monotonous. I will need to change their personalities next time they are remade.

"Leave me."

Inhumanely obedient as always, with none of the fuss and objection a child would put up at that command, my two shikigami fly off. I watch until they are mere dots on the horizon.

My bow lies in the corner. Idly, I pick it up and stroke the smooth, ebony-hued wood. I finger the sharp arrowheads, their straight hafts; imagine them flying steady and true towards a target. I can almost hear the whistling buzz as they streak through the air, the solid thunk as they bury themselves viciously into yielding flesh, the painful expulsion of air from Inuyasha as the magical fire takes effect—

I recoil; the bow and arrows clatter harmlessly to the floor as I clutch my head. What is wrong with me today? Why am I imagining Inuyasha's death?

From the part of my heart that is human still, I can feel a solitary tear move down my cheek.

I still love him.

I will kill him.

=====

A few minutes later, the bow clutched once again in still-numb fingers and a quiver of arrows slung at my side, I am striding through the forest. Today...today is not right. That fact would be obvious to one struck deaf and blind.

But I am neither; I am a miko, with a miko's powers. Frowning, I stop, brushing my fingers over the ground. I feel something, something frighteningly strong, but in one elusive sweep the sensation is gone, leaving me with a prickling sting in my hand and a bitter taste in my mouth.

That something does not want me to find it.

I lift my face toward the sun, closing my eyes as the warmth hits my pseudo flesh, imagining the lancing rays soaking through earth and burnt bone to spread comfortable heat through my body. And yet it is no more than that: my imagination.

That some unknown presence should be able to elude the magical grasp of I, Kikyou...it sends an almost-forgotten thrill of fear down my spine, but more than that. This presence is dangerous, powerful; I can feel that. Still, it intrigues me.

What is destiny? I sense that this is mine.

=====

Red.

I whip around, with an arrow already nocked to taut bow string. The momentary flash of crimson is gone. I exhale slowly, shifting the bow to a more comfortable position. In my mind, that red is just the color of fresh-spilt blood...

There it is, again. And again, it is gone when I turn. This part of the woods is familiar to me; south of my birth village. I mentally run through a list of possible threats in this area: some small yôkai, but nothing really dangerous.

And nothing red.

Or is there? My head is throbbing. Of their own volitions, my fingers clench and unclench in nervous expectation. Oh yes, _one_ thing distinctly red may be wandering this stretch of forest.

It has been a few weeks since we last met. Perhaps I will enjoy this encounter, but as my fingers play once again over the arrows, I doubt that Inuyasha will leave it alive.

===================================

Eheh. First attempt at a first-person narrative type...one more chapter to go; I still need to fulfill that little reference to the inu/kik/KAG part of the summary.


	2. dream

i/k/k Dreams are fantasies, wishes, jealousies, yearnings, the darkest and most desperate secrets of the heart. And when we wake, they are gone, chased away for another night. Or are they? What if dreams are something a little more...real?

**yume**

**(dream)**

a darker inuyasha/kagome/kikyou

-------

There are footfalls in the distance, but from where...?

Left, right, forward, back; the whole forest is suddenly filled with the sleepy crackle of leaves unmercifully awoken from their dying rest. Eddies of wind whisper up, and as the gold-rust-amber skeletons whirl up in a dance of color and splendor, the taste of decay settles into the air. Foul, putrid, _rotting_, and despite the vibrant display before my eyes, I can sense the death that is encroaching, inexorable, _here_.

Right there.

Death, in the startled-deer eyes of the girl before me, crumbling leaves still clinging tenaciously to her clothes and hair. The same skeletal leaves that whispered to me, _death_, now enclose her in an ethereal shroud that, as she stands backlit against the sun, glows red-gold and vivid and shouts of _life_.

And I, in the sullen shadow of her brilliance, can taste only decay on the air.

And oh, this girl, how I...

Love her. Yes, love her, for she carries a part of me within her. A face at once strange and familiar, flushed pink now with vivacious energy and astonishment. The heart that beats out a rhythm almost forgotten to me, and which cherishes a hanyou that even the dirt-clogged pit of my own cannot hope to relinquish. How can I not love her, this girl who could almost be me?

Hate her. She has what should be mine by right, has stolen from me the only thing worth having, and still she pretends. Hides behind a flimsy façade of sympathy and girlish kindness that rips at the tattered fragments of my much-battered soul. Makes a mockery of her inherited power, for which I worked and sacrificed and died. Oh, this girl who has everything without losing anything, who takes and takes and pretends to give...

Love. Hate. Struggling side-by-side, twisting and destroying and recreating in their endless battle until both are hopelessly intertwined. Their combat leaves little room for humanity to slip in.

For even mindless spirits, the vengeful dead, can subsist on love and hate. They need nothing more than that raw power to continue their tortured existence, and while everything else is lost, one or the other remains. One needs not even the barest sliver of humanity to be dead, but to be alive—!

—with cheeks that flush rosy-red and hair that tangles and snarls in the wind. With rushing blood and warm limbs and a heart that can change, can expand, can escape from fixed, eternal immobility.

And so as she stands there, startled-deer eyes with the subtle cast of light that mine can never hold, can you blame me? Lit with the glow of autumn leaves that bathe her in life and give me naught but the bitter aftertaste—can you blame me? Standing here, knowing myself to be nothing but her dark dying _dead_ shadow, can you blame me? That I should quiver and point to and desire that beating, beating heart—can you blame me? I do it not out of hate, but out of love for her life. Her life/my life; I am only taking what is already mine—so can you blame me?

I send my arrow to her with a blessing and a kiss.

-------

A hella weird, but hopefully tantalizing little interlude-chapter-thing. It's 12:04 AM, and I just wrote this without any backtracking whatsoever. Tada!

I lied. There's DEFINTELY about to be a part three. You didn't really think Inu was going to escape from this warped little triangle, did you?

And...haha. Some reviewer said that my way of organizing Inu/Kik/Kag in the summary was misleading, but hey...I think this at least partially fulfills the promised pairing. :x


	3. destiny

**yume**

**(dream) **

_[a darker inuyasha/kikyou/kagome_

I wake.

Before I've caught my first wheezing, gasping, panicked breath of air, my fingers are jumping around in a frenzied dance. I grope for sleeping bag, clothes, chest, searching for the terrifyingly solid arrow shaft that I _know_ is there.

Only it's not. The part of my mind not screaming in sheer, instinctive terror reasserts itself with firm common sense. I'm alive, I'm not bleeding, and dreams are just dreams. I know that as surely as one plus one makes two, and I'm Higurashi Kagome.

But it's not so easy to convince my fingers. They're sticky with blood that I know isn't there.

It's stupid, it's dumb, it's a trick of the imagination that I should just shrug off. I repeat this mantra to myself as I lie in my immaculate sleeping bag, feeling red liquid trickle down in viscous streams from an invisible wound: pooling in the hollow at my collarbone, soaking into my clothes, tangling my just-washed hair into impossible knots.

I take deep, steadying breaths. The night air is suddenly stale and my nose stings with the heavy stench of copper.

I squeeze my eyes shut and battle this crazy hallucination. I want nothing more than to get up, throw my

_(wetdrippingsoddenbloody)_

—_clean_ clothes off, take a cold bath in that little stream nearby, and stop torturing myself. But I won't. I can't. Though the exact details are already fading away with the first touch of misty-gray dawn on the horizon, there was—still is—an eerie crystal clarity about my dream. The touch and scent and taste of warm blood shiver on that indefinable border between illusion and reality, and giving in to the impulse to scrub myself clean would mean admitting the frightening possibility that they belong to the latter.

So I lie there as the sun inches its way over the edge of the earth and try not to scream.

-------

I'm a wreck by the time my friends start stirring. Bleary-eyed and yawning, I stumble and stagger and lurch around, making such a mess of things that Sango-chan finally sits me down in a corner and tells me not to move for a while. She does it in the kindest of ways, but her firm grip on my arm doesn't let me forget that my friend _is_ a taijiya after all.

I roll my eyes when I see Inuyasha headed in my direction. Great. It's not like I meant to tip over the last cup of ramen in my sleepy attempt to 'help' this morning.

Inuyasha storms up to me with his familiar petulant expression and freezes. Literally. It's like one of those hunting dogs that point when they've caught the scent, nose quivering, one leg up in mid-step, ears and tail alert. I would laugh if his eyes didn't flicker in something akin to fear.

"What?"

"...Nothing," he mumbles, giving me a troubled, searching glance that means just the opposite. "It's just...I thought...nothing."

"What?" I leap to my feet with the question this time, shedding sleepiness for the heady rush of adrenaline humming in my veins. The air tingles like it's been supercharged, an electric crackle something close to the sensation of a Shikon shard nearby. I yank his hair as he tries to turn away. "Tell me."

He meets my eyes reluctantly. I bet I'm a mess—bedhead, bags under my eyes, the whole nine yards. Is there something else he sees too? Something else that makes him duck away again and tell me the truth without meeting my eyes?

"It's nothing! It was just for a second and it's gone now. I thought...coming from you...I thought I smelled blood."

It's strange how little his words surprise me. I feel like I've known all along what he was going to say. There's a certain rightness about hearing the words, like a lock clicking into place, like...destiny.

"Oh."

Maybe Inuyasha feels it too. His next words are delivered in a strange monotone: "Kikyou's blood."

I clutch suddenly at his arm, as if the touch of skin against skin can chase away the weight I feel descending on us. I look up at his face for comfort, he looks down at mine, and we both shift our eyes away.

"It's going to be ok," I tell him unconvincingly, trying and failing to find my usual cheery optimism through the thick fog of the remnants of last night's dream.

We both feel it, through the hollowness of my words: something ominous billowing up on the horizon like a thundercloud.

-------

We break camp more quickly than usual, thanks in large part to Inuyasha's terse yelling and my quiet but harried packing, as if by moving fast enough we could our problems. Miroku and Sango exchange looks of confusion that become less confused and more worried as the day progresses and the oppressive atmosphere deepens.

Dusk falls on a nearly silent company of travelers. Even Shippou is oddly repressed as he requests his pre-dinner lollipop, and I hand it to him with a vague pat on the head.

I need to get out of here. I need—with choking, insistent urgency—to_breathe_.

"I'm going to take a walk," I say, my voice all artificial sunshine. "I'll be back before night."

And I bolt. I walk quickly—not running, because there's nothing_wrong_ so why would I _run_—until the crunch of dry leaves underfoot drown out the murmur of Sango's worried voice and Inuyasha's reassurances. The forest closes behind me; in the twilight, the trees are painted over with a fine veil of ethereal gray, and I imagine that I can see infinitely far, maybe even see through the trunks and branches and leaves. It's a safe feeling.

Until I step forward into a clearing that catches the last rays of fast-fading sunlight and reality flips head-over-heels, an inverting mirror in which I see my own face, my own shock, my own vulnerability reflected in Kikyou's eyes. I stand rooted to the spot not out of fear, not out of panic, but out of the irresistible, inescapable sensation of déjà vu. That same part of my mind that woke up screaming this morning is calm; its terror is already spent and it simply waits for the inevitable.

_(ohmygodohmygodit'sthedreamrunrunrunrunrun)_

but the calmness has spread its way through my body and my limbs feel soft and heavy and sleepy so that when the arrow does come, its graceful arc exactly the same as I remember, I—

-------

I wake.

"Kagome!"

Inuyasha's voice is the first thing that registers. I open my eyes and pat myself over with the familiarity of repetition, but this time I'm expecting it when my fingers hit no arrow.

"What are you doing here?"

"I guess I fell asleep," I say slowly, testing the feel of the words in my mouth. They taste false. Tinny.

"Why…are you holding that?"

My groggy mind registers the curious flatness that has returned to his voice, and I look down at my right hand.

"This bow? I don't know." No, not tinny, more like…copper.

"It's Kikyou's bow."

"Kikyou's blood, Kikyou's bow, Kikyou's arrow…" I murmur, touching the smooth haft. Automatically, I reach for an arrow.

"Kagome? How did you get that?

"Kikyou's blood, Kikyou's bow, Kikyou's arrow," I repeat in singsong, gracefully drawing a single arrow to the string. Wait, only one? I always grab at least three, just in case—but it's ok, because Kikyou never misses.

_(I never miss)_

"Kagome?!" Inuyasha calls, eyes flicking nervously from her bow to my face.

"What?" I snap irritably.

_(Wrong one)_

"Kagome, what's wrong? What are you doing?"

"Shut up for a second, Inuyasha. I think I'm starting to figure this out." I murmur the magic words under my breath—_"kikyou'sbloodkikyou'sbowikyou'sarrow"_

_(My blood, my bow, my arrow) _

—and something is indeed falling into place, a deep reverberation that hums into my bones. I block him out: check the feathers. Perfect. Check the shaft. Straight and true. Check the arrowhead: sharp enough to prick my finger. I raise the wound to my mouth but barely feel it because my mouth already tastes like copper.

"Kagome, please, listen to me—"

Finger to arrow to string. Left hand resting on the worn grip. The hum becomes a rumble becomes a roar that chases away the lingering uneasiness and all is right with the world. So long as I hold Kikyou's bow.

_(So long as I hold my bow)_

"Put that down and we'll go back to Kaede-baba, figure out—"

My fingers twitch, itching for more, and I obligingly swing the bow up and look out over the shaft. It points straight and true into the dark forest. The trees are somehow unsatisfying; I scan my surroundings until I find a promising swatch of bright red that glows like a bullseyes in the gloom.

_(Red: the circle completes itself)_

"Kagome, it's me!"

_(I know)_

I think I may be crying; someone is sobbing in deep, wheezing gulps and there is liquid running down my cheeks but I can't tell if it's tears or blood all I can see is red red red

"KAGOME!"

Finger to arrow to string. Draw back the arm. Loose. The warmth of fulfillment, of finality flows through me and burns the liquid off my face because I see the target moving, dodging, but all too slowly because Kikyou is fast

_(I am fast)_

Kikyou's arrows fly true

_(my arrows fly true)_

Kikyou never misses

_(I never miss)_

and all that I, Kagome, can do as the roar fills my head and blocks my ears and shatters me to my very core is hope that this is all a dream.

_(and this time, it's not a dream)_

-------

**Done. Finally. Don't even bother asking what it means, because I'm quite as lost as everyone else. This isn't meant to be logical or suspect to explanation. If it makes your skin crawl, that's enough. Thanks for reading!**


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